StoryCraft Novel Challenge Day 23: Set the right pace for your reader.
Every writer hopes readers won’t be able to put our books down. We imagine them picking them up at the bookstore, rushing home, and then racing through it page by page, obsessed with getting to the end. And while every moment of a story can’t achieve this level of urgency, we can all strive for our stories to have dynamic pacing.
Pacing is part structure and part style. It’s affected by the order of our story beats and also by the way we form our prose. Dynamic books are usually considered fast-paced or a slow-burn, and both have their place on the shelf.
A fast-paced book is marked by the immediacy of the stakes and how efficient the prose is. These books are usually quick and to the point, whisking the reader from moment to moment with just enough time to convey the story and keep them turning the page. These are commercial books, thrillers, adventures, and even simmering romances.
A slow-burn allows for a bit more room to explore every moment. Where a fast-paced book has immediate stakes, the slow-burn digs deeper into each emotion, adding layer upon layer of complexity and depth. These are generally more literary novels or the more recent Dark Academia.
Part of the StoryCraft Process has been really focused on figuring out what kind of book you want to write, and this is a core part of that process. When we know ahead of time exactly the reader experience we want to convey, we can find it more quickly when it comes time to draft the prose.
Whatever the pacing of your novel is, as long as you have strong StoryCraft, your readers will trust you to lead them through the story. Our online course StoryCraft: Writing Your Novel is currently in Beta, and you can join for $150 off with SCBETA.
We’ll be talking more about how to draw your reader in tomorrow when we figure out our hook. Don’t forget to use hashtag #StoryCraftNovelChallenge to share your progress and connect with other writers.
Happy Writing,
Jess and Theo